Thursday, December 11, 2008

Jeong Won Korean BBQ - Revisit

To kind of celebrate the holidays with some friends from work, we decided to have lunch at Jeong Won Korean BBQ yesterday. Ms. L and Mr. S were with me the first time in May. And since Ms. L and I noticed some differences between the 2 visits, I thought it was worth mentioning.

We also brought along Mr. T (no fool, not that Mr. T!). We got there a little after 11 am, the first customers of the day through the door. A very pleasant lady brought our menus and another very pleasant lady took our drink order. The first thing I noticed was that the menu has changed for the AYCE section. (Sorry, forgot my camera at home and had to use my Blackberry to take this photo.)



First off, it's now $19.85 per person (up $2 since May). And vegetable and seafood combos have been added. Notice the hours of operation on the right side. Happy hour starts at 11 am Monday through Friday! That means lunch hour discounts! Also, senior discounts and kids prices have been added. I did find the age of the kids price interesting. What about kids under the age of 6?

We ordered the galbi, boolgogi (bulgogi), dak gooi, and saewoo gooi to start (these spellings are throwing me off). They left one of the menus for us for re-order (nice!). Soon the panchan came. Not too different from the ones I remember from back in May. Then came the meat entries. Right off the bat, I noticed the much smaller plate, like the size of a small dinner salad. Hmm, might be a problem if they are slow on re-ordering of meat but we'll see. What I was really happy to see is that the galbi had actual ribs on them! This might be a not-so-good thing for those who just want the meat but for me, I like the taste of galbi with the bones. Well, because I'm a bone picker (sounds kind of weird now that I think about it). I also noticed that the marinade for the bulgogi and the galbi were on the darker side.

The young lady who served us was very nice and gave extra guidance to the guys. They did look a little perplexed, actually (hehe). Ms. L thought everything was better than the first time we were there. I definitely think the galbi had much better flavor although a bit on the sweet side.

The service was great. The servers changed out our grill plate 3 times. One of them suggested trying the beef brisket. It was good but our favorites were still the bulgogi and galbi. We also tried the squid and it was okay but liked the shrimp better. We were all pretty full by the end, although one of the servers thought we hadn't nearly enough and said there was still plenty of food in the back. Ha! But we were all pretty stuffed by then.

They still offer the free soft serve and juice, although the soft serve machine was on the blink yesterday. So overall, everyone really enjoyed the meal. I've read some reviews in the past month how the quality has gone down but we didn't find that to be the case on our visit. Mr. T even said he wanted to bring his wife for dinner.

Jeong Won Korean BBQ
4690 Convoy St., #104
San Diego, CA 92111
Hours: Sun-Sat 11:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m.
Happy Hour $16.85: Mon-Fri 11:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m.; 9:00 p.m-12:00 a.m.
Senior Discount $16.85 anytime
Kids Discount (6-9 years old) $8.85

Hope everyone isn't going too crazy with holiday shopping. And remember, always stop to eat well to keep your energy up!

5 comments:

imjustatree said...

i love calvin and hobbes...one of my favorites as a kid, and still good today.

i wish you had taken some pictures of the food bc i'm quite hungry after reading your post....and did you see by any chance what the vegetable platter was about? i like pork belly too...

i haven't had ayce korean bbq for a while now, and you're making me want to get some

CAB said...

Hey Sawyer! How's finals going?

I had the camera all ready but bone-head me forgot to put it in my purse. I took a couple with the Blackberry but the pictures sucked so I didn't post them.

I didn't ask what was on the veggie platter but as part of the meat dishes, you get a ring of green bell pepper, button mushroom and sliced onions. By the time I remembered about the pork belly, we were all pretty stuffed so we decided not to get a plate of it. Darn, now I'm hungry for some AYCE bbq!

CAB said...

I forgot to mention, I love Calvin and Hobbes, too! My mom used to tell me that the reason why I like Calvin is because I used to make faces like him when I was little. Yeah, right. Okay, maybe.

KirkK said...

Hi CAB - We had experienced a bit of a downslide on our last visit.... so maybe it was just a blip! Thanks for sharing!

CAB said...

Hey Kirk! You were not the only one who experienced a downslide. I've read quite a few reviews since Oct. that said the same thing. Maybe my visit was the blip. I did notice that patronage was waaay down on a Thursday. When we left, right in the middle of lunch time, there were only 3 other tables. I sure hope they do what they need to to make things better.